Most people don't realize that most, if not all, laptop computers ship with very slow, very inefficient, and very loud hard drives. Most people don't realize that Apple's Mac Mini suffers from this problem as well.

When my laptop's drive died two years ago, I replaced it with a 60 gig drive from Hitachi that runs at 7200RPM (with 8MB cache) instead of 4200RPM or 3600RPM. The difference was noticable immediately. In addition to increased speed, the drive runs much cooler than traditional laptop drives and is as quiet as hard drives come. And, if that's not enough, it's also more energy efficient so you're battery will last a little longer as well.

If you want to breathe some new life into that aging laptop, or make that brand new Mac Mini perform like a real computer, you should probably think about picking one of these up. You can pop one into a tiny USB enclosure for a killer portable drive, too.

wrong, steve-o. Higher speed drives run hotter, not cooler. Faster drives also suck more power... which causes your battery to warm up, also increasing internal heat. You're right about one thing, though... Performance is better. I threw one in my 17" powerbook and it made it considerably faster.